The following review was written by Oscar Ross and first published in Mayday Mayday, the newsletter of The Crew of the S.S.May Day (Issue No. 97, p. 3, April 2010):

What am I doing reviewing a book that has nothing to do with Holmes or Doyle?  The answer to this conundrum lies on the front cover of Rugby Football.  Bertram Fletcher Robinson ([hereafter] BFR) played a significant role in the genesis of The Hound of the Baskervilles, so there’s really no need to apologise for acknowledging the man and his works.

Starting to turn the pages, the realisation quickly dawned that I’d crossed a border and entered the lost world of amateur sport.  This was an era when the curse of all sporting activity – money, had only started to make its all-pervasive presence felt.  The Rugby Football Union had become bitterly divided over a proposal to pay match expenses to players and split in 1896.  The fall-out resulted in the formation of two separate codes - Rugby Union with its strictly amateur code and Rugby League which was more professionally inclined.  BFR was a supporter of amateurism in sport and decided to chart the birth of Rugby Union.  Well known in rugby circles during the 1890s, according to The Times, he played alongside many international players for the Cambridge Rugby Union Football Club 1st XV and the Combined Oxford and Cambridge Universities XV. ‘He’d only missed an International cap by accident’, the Daily Express reported.

Rugby Football was the first volume in a nine-part series on Sports and Pastimes for The Isthmian Library between 1896 and 1901 and met with considerable success.  It details the laws, training techniques and tactics that were specific to the game and reviews its development as an international sport.  As well as BFR, it includes contributions from several other historical rugby figures.

This book is a facsimile of the original publication with an added backdrop and introduction contributed by our member Paul Spiring, ably supported by Hugh Cooke and Patrick Casey.

To be perfectly honest, I’ve never been a rugger fan, a situation not entirely unrelated, to being coerced into playing it at school.  While this volume hasn’t exactly converted me (oops!), nevertheless it’s helped me to appreciate some of the finer points of the game.  Mind you, I can’t see myself rushing out, to Ravenhill on Friday nights to watch Ulster play in the Magners League, at least not just yet.

Rugby Football is an enjoyable read.  It can surely be appreciated by anyone who has an interest in the history and development of sport, particularly the sort that is played by grown men, hurtling round muddy grass fields in relentless pursuit of leather balls.